Entertainment

Critics are crushing 'Batman v Superman' from every angle

As a society, we love superhero movies — but when a movie like Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice comes along, we're just as likely to love to hate it. On the cusp of its release, Zack Snyder's multimillion dollar DC Comics adaptation is poised for blockbuster success...and critical devastation.

David Edelstein of Vulturewent ahead and declared the film "godawful" right out of the gate:

It’s a shame that 'Batman v Superman' is also a storytelling disgrace. It has maybe six opening scenes and jumps so incessantly from subplot to subplot that a script doctor would diagnose a peculiarly modern infection: “disjunctivitis.” Said infection is the upshot of a sort of gene-splicing. For a studio to move beyond the “franchise” and “tentpole” stages to the vastly lucrative “universe,” a comic-book movie must at every turn gesture towards sequels and spinoffs, teasing out loose ends, cultivating irresolution. The movie wanders into so many irrelevant byways that it comes to seem abstract. There’s enough going on to keep you watching — and, as I said, to keep fanboys wowed by the scale of the production and pretension. But most people will leave feeling drained and depressed, wondering how a studio can get away with withholding so much.

I get that this mano a supermano story line is a sacred text among comic-book aficionados, but 'Dawn of Justice' doesn’t do the tale any favors. It’s overstuffed, confusing, and seriously crippled by Eisenberg’s over-the-top performance. As the megalomaniac tech mogul hell-bent on bringing our heroes to their knees, the actor is a grating cartoon of manic motormouth tics. He might as well be wearing a buzzing neon sign around his neck that says “Crazy Villain.”

The solemn, grandiose atmosphere is severely disrupted by Luthor, portrayed by Eisenberg as a privileged tech guru who makes the actor's take on Mark Zuckerberg look like the epitome of style and manners. Loaded with vocal ticks and gushing with smarmy ripostes and threats, the character is loathsome without an ounce of insidious charm; if the legacy of the studio's 'Dark Knight' films might have suggested anything, it should have been in the area of great villains, but here there is just a great vacuum.

Rob Harvilla at Deadspin experienced an emotional journey during the opening scenes that summed up his entire experience:

A clearly excited 7- or 8-year-old kid sitting in front of me busted out crying and had to be whisked out of the theater by his father within the first five minutes. Perhaps he was unnerved by the harsh, operatic violence of Bruce Wayne’s parents getting murdered...or maybe he was offended by the notion that a 2016 Batman movie felt it necessary to depict Bruce Wayne’s parents getting murdered. Either way, this kid bounced. (As an unsubtle metaphor for the aging target audience for comic-book movies, this is nonetheless way subtler than anything in the film itself.) I felt really terrible for that kid immediately, and was mildly envious of him two hours and 25 minutes later.

Vox'sAlex Abad-Santos called BvS the "floor" of superhero movies — a new low from which there is nowhere to go but up.

The few bright spots of 2013's 'Man of Steel' — Kevin Costner and Diane Lane's humanizing portrayals of Pa and Ma Kent, Amy Adams's Lois Lane, the initial awe of Superman taking flight — are but a distant memory. In their place is a stink bucket of disappointment, a sad and unnecessary PG-13 orphan fight that director Zack Snyder believes is an homage to DC Comics' most iconic heroes but is more along the lines of a home invasion perpetrated on comic book culture.

The face-off scenes may be full of blasts and broken buildings, but Jen Yamato at The Daily Beast thought they lacked depth:

Juggling all of these strands while steadily beating the drum toward the battle promised in the title, Snyder sometimes loses track of his various allegories. Scripters Chris Terrio and David S. Goyer provide kernels of philosophical and theological quandaries throughout, while their nods toward contemporary political debates are more complex than the scattered visual gags (such as an anti-Superman protester waving an “Aliens Are Un-American” placard) might seem to imply. Yet the essential clash of ideologies promised by the central conflict — vigilante justice vs. self-sacrificing restraint, night vs. day, Dionysus vs. Apollo — never develops quite as forcefully as it should, and the life-or-death battle between the two icons ultimately comes down to a series of misunderstandings.

Over at The Guardian, Andrew Pulver concedes the film's merits, including Ben Affleck in the Bat suit — but in the end, he can't help mentioning the M word:

– which addressed their characters’ tortured backgrounds and unhappy responsibilities – looms large, even if Nolan has drifted to executive producer credit on this film. It’s tough to take all the hardcore emoting seriously, particularly as the emotional heavy lifting is designed to be done by the occasional maudlin line in brief pauses between the explosions. For a film so concerned with its characters’ inner lives, there’s a fundamental disconnect going on here – enough to make you yearn for the lighter touch of the Marvel films.

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